(Im)migration Movements & the Law

The border region of the Sonoran Desert, which spans southern Arizona in the United States and northern Sonora, Mexico, has attracted national and international attention. But what is less discussed in national discourses is the impact of current border policies on the Native peoples of the region. There are twenty-six tribal nations recognized by the U.S. federal government in the southern border region and approximately eight groups of Indigenous peoples in the United States with historical ties to Mexico--the Yaqui, the O'odham, the Cocopah, the Kumeyaay, the Pai, the Apaches, the Tiwa (Tigua), and the Kickapoo. Divided Peoples addresses the impact border policies have on traditional lands and the peoples who live there--whether environmental degradation, border patrol harassment, or the disruption of traditional ceremonies. Anthropologist Christina Leza shows how such policies affect the traditional cultural survival of Indigenous peoples along the border. The author examines local interpretations and uses of international rights tools by Native activists, counterdiscourse on the U.S.-Mexico border, and challenges faced by Indigenous border activists when communicating their issues to a broader public. Through ethnographic research with grassroots Indigenous activists in the region, the author reveals several layers of division--the division of Indigenous peoples by the physical U.S.-Mexico border, the divisions that exist between Indigenous perspectives and mainstream U.S. perspectives regarding the border, and the traditionalist/nontraditionalist split among Indigenous nations within the United States. Divided Peoples asks us to consider the possibilities for challenging settler colonialism both in sociopolitical movements and in scholarship about Indigenous peoples and lands.

"In personal stories from twenty years of activism and reporting, an award-winning journalist calls on readers to imagine a world without borders. Every year an untold number of people perish attempting to cross the border into the United States. Thousands of families who do make it across are apprehended and separated, often with children languishing in cages. In light of the harm it unleashes, does our increasingly militarized border policy make anyone more secure? To answer that question, Todd Miller draws upon over twenty years of work investigating international borders. In a series of anecdotes, he relates his encounters with U.S. Border Patrol agents, deportees, migrants, human-rights activists, and scholars, taking readers on a journey from the deserts of the Southwest, to the mountains of Chiapas and Guatemala, and to border zones across the globe. Through the lens of his stories and personal reflections, Miller tackles big questions in clear and inviting prose, encouraging us to honestly reckon with our own beliefs about how best to meet the critical challenges of a world in migration. This pocket-sized, easy-to-read edition is a must-have for all those who hope that a better world is possible. In a clarion call to our collective humanity, Todd Miller makes a case for tearing down barriers-both at the borders and in our own minds-as the necessary first step to achieving security by building bridges, not walls"--

"Today the United States is home to more unauthorized immigrants than at any time in the country's history. As scrutiny around immigration has intensified, border enforcement has tightened. The result is a population of new Americans who are more entrenched than ever before. Crossing harsher, less porous borders makes entry to the US a permanent, costly enterprise. And the challenges don't end once they're here. In The Border Within, journalist Kalee Thompson and economist Tara Watson examine the costs and ends of America's immigration-enforcement complex, particularly its practices of internal enforcement: the policies and agencies, including ICE, aimed at removing unauthorized immigrants living in the US. Thompson and Watson's economic appraisal of immigration's costs and benefits is interlaid with first-person reporting of families who personify America's policies in a time of scapegoating and fear. The result is at once enlightening and devastating. Thomspon and Watson examine immigration's impact on every aspect of American life, from the labor force to social welfare programs to tax revenue. The results paint an overwhelmingly positive picture of what non-native Americans bring to the country, including immigration's tendency to elevate the wages and skills of those who are native born. Their research also finds a stark gap between the realities of America's immigrant population and the policies meant to uproot them: America's internal enforcements are grounded in shock and awe more than any reality of where and how immigrants live. The objective, it seems, is to deploy "chilling effects" -- performative displays aimed at producing upstream effects on economic behaviors and decision-making among immigrants. The ramifications of these fear-based policies extends beyond immigrants themselves; they have impacts on American citizens living in immigrant families as well as on the broader society"--

"In his scathing and deeply reported examination of the U.S. Border Patrol, Todd Miller argues that the agency has gone rogue since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, trampling on the dignity and rights of the undocumented with military-style tactics ... Miller's book arrives at a moment when it appears that part of the Homeland Security apparatus is backpedaling by promising to tone down its tactics, maybe prodded by investigative journalism, maybe by the revelations of NSA leaker Edward Snowden ...Border Patrol is quite possibly the right book at the right time ... "--Tony Perry,Los Angeles Times "At the start of his unsettling and important new book,Border Patrol Nation, Miller observes that these days 'it is common to see the Border Patrol in places--such as Erie, Pennsylvania; Rochester, New York; or Forks, Washington--where only fifteen years ago it would have seemed far-fetched, if not unfathomable.'"--Barbara Spindel,Christian Science Monitor "Miller's approach inBorder Patrol Nation is to offer a glimpse into the secretive operations of the Border Patrol, reporting with a journalist's objectivity and nose for a good story. Miller's book is full of facts, and it's clear he's outraged, but he gives voices to people on every side of the issue ... Miller's book is a fascinating read ... and bring the work of Susan Orlean to mind."--Amanda Eyre Ward,Kirkus Reviews "Todd Miller's invaluable and gripping book,Border Patrol Nation: Dispatches from the Front Lines of Homeland Security is the story of how this country's borders are being transformed into up-armored, heavily militarized zones run by a border-industrial complex. It's an achievement and an eye opener."--Tom Engelhardt,TomDispatch "What Jeremy Scahill was to Blackwater, Todd Miller is to the U.S. Border Patrol!"--Tom Miller, author,On the Border: Portraits of America's Southwestern Frontier "Todd Miller has entered a secret world, and he has gone deep ... Powerful."--Luis Alberto Urrea, author ofThe Devil's Highway: A True Story "Journalist Miller tells an alarming story of U.S. Border Patrol and Homeland Security's ever-widening reach into the lives of American citizens and legal immigrants as well as the undocumented. In addition to readers interested in immigration issues, those concerned about the NSA's privacy violations will likely be even more shocked by the actions of Homeland Security."--Publishers Weekly, Starred Review Armed authorities watch from a military-grade surveillance tower as lines of people stream toward the security checkpoint, tickets in hand, anxious and excited to get through the gate. Few seem to notice or care that the US Border Patrol is monitoring the Super Bowl, as they have for years, one of the many ways that forces created to police the borders are now being used, in an increasingly militarized fashion, to survey and monitor the whole of American society. In fast-paced prose, Todd Miller sounds an alarm as he chronicles the changing landscape. Traveling the country--and beyond--to speak with the people most involved with and impacted by the Border Patrol, he combines these first-hand encounters with careful research to expose a vast and booming industry for high-end technology, weapons, surveillance, and prisons. While politicians and corporations reap substantial profits, the experiences of millions of men, women, and children pointto staggering humanitarian consequences.Border Patrol Nation shows us in stark relief how the entire country has become a militarized border zone, with consequences that affect us all. Todd Miller has worked on and written about US border issues for over fifteen years.

Winner, Abbott Lowell Cummings Award, Vernacular Architecture Forum, 2020 From the boundary surveys of the 1850s to the ever-expanding fences and highway networks of the twenty-first century, Border Land, Border Water examines the history of the construction projects that have shaped the region where the United States and Mexico meet. Tracing the accretion of ports of entry, boundary markers, transportation networks, fences and barriers, surveillance infrastructure, and dams and other river engineering projects, C. J. Alvarez advances a broad chronological narrative that captures the full life cycle of border building. He explains how initial groundbreaking in the nineteenth century transitioned to unbridled faith in the capacity to control the movement of people, goods, and water through the use of physical structures. By the 1960s, however, the built environment of the border began to display increasingly obvious systemic flaws. More often than not, Alvarez shows, federal agencies in both countries responded with more construction--"compensatory building" designed to mitigate unsustainable policies relating to immigration, black markets, and the natural world. Border Land, Border Water reframes our understanding of how the border has come to look and function as it does and is essential to current debates about the future of the US-Mexico divide.

"This volume offers a critical investigation of the risk and the physical toll of migration along the U.S. southern border"--

"An esteemed journalist delivers a compelling on-the-ground account of the construction of President Trump's border wall in San Diego-and the impact on the lives of local residents. In August of 2019, Donald Trump finished building his border wall-at least a portion of it. In San Diego, the Army Corps of engineers completed two years of construction on a 14-mile steel beamed barrier that extends eighteen-feet high and cost a staggering $147 million. As one border patrol agent told reporters visiting the site, "It was funded and approved and it was built under his administration. It is Trump's wall." 14 Miles is a definitive account of all the dramatic construction, showing readers what it feels like to stand on both sides of the border looking up at the imposing and controversial barrier. After the Department of Homeland Security announced an open call for wall prototypes in 2017, DW Gibson, an award-winning journalist and Southern California native, began visiting the construction site and watching as the prototype samples were erected. Gibson spent those two years closely observing the work and interviewing local residents to understand how it was impacting them. These include April McKee, a border patrol agent leading a recruiting program that trains teenagers to work as agents; Jeff Schwilk, a retired Marine who organizes pro-wall rallies as head of the group San Diegans for Secure Borders; Roque De La Fuente, an eccentric millionaire developer who uses the construction as a promotional opportunity; and Civile Ephedouard, a Haitian refugee who spent two years migrating through Central America to the United States and anxiously awaits the results of his asylum case. Fascinating, propulsive, and incredibly timely, 14 Miles is an important work that explains not only how the wall has reshaped our landscape and countless lives but also how its shadow looms over our very identity as a nation"--

Two O’odham women arrested at the border were taken to a private prison where they were denied access to the outside world.

Amber Ortega was arrested for physically blocking construction machinery at Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument last September

The destructive legacy of Trump’s border wall campaign cannot be measured in miles alone and will not be easily undone.

EL PASO, Texas (Border Report) – The National Park Service has closed public access to a spot in southern Arizona where activists were arrested last week for protesting construction of the border w…

The United States’ southern border with Mexico is 1,933 miles long, stretching from the Pacific Ocean to the tip of South Texas. Some 700 of those miles have fencing in place, and it varies greatly depending on where you are.

LGBTQ+ immigrants say officials have failed to address discrimination, and that an inadequate response to Covid is compounding their misery

President Trump and Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) are headed to a final showdown over his signature border wall, setting the stage for a rematch of a fight two years ago that shuttered the govern…

President to visit new section of border wall at San Luis, then deliver political speech in Phoenix

In visiting the US-Mexico border, Trump seeks to change the subject to an issue he thinks will help electrify his base.

“A historically significant area is going to be changed irreparably. You’re never going to be able to put it back together.”

In Arizona, the president visits a new section of border wall at San Luis before delivering a political speech in Phoenix

What happened to President Trump's long-promised wall? How much of it got built? And how effective has it been?

Photographs published by Gizmodo appear to show sections of the partially constructed wall torn apart by monsoon rains

You've heard a lot of talk about the wall. Here's what it's really like.

President Trump's long-promised border wall is igniting a fight over public lands in Arizona that could be adversely impacted by the construction of barriers that will most-likely alter the landscape in areas treasured by locals and nature lovers.

Victim’s identity and country of origin has not been released yet but he was likely an undocumented migrant, authorities say

Contractors replacing the wall are pushing old metal to the Mexican side of Arizona's border, where it's being sold, witnesses told local news.

For the first time, scientists have mapped out the groundwater the two countries share.

In her Brookings Essay, "The Wall," Brookings Senior Fellow Vanda Felbab-Brown explains the true costs of building a barrier on the U.S.-Mexico border.

The Mexico–United States barrier is a series of vertical barriers along the Mexico–United States border intended to reduce illegal immigration to the United States from Mexico. The barrier is not a continuous structure but a series of obstructions variously classified as "fences" or "walls".

The Trump wall, commonly referred to as "The Wall", is an expansion of the Mexico–United States barrier that started during the U.S. presidency of Donald Trump and was a critical part of Trump's campaign platform in the 2016 presidential election. Throughout his 2016 presidential campaign, Trump called for the construction of a border wall. He said that, if elected, he would "build the wall and make Mexico pay for it". Then-Mexican president Enrique Peña Nieto rejected Trump's claim that Mexico would pay for the wall; all construction in fact relied exclusively on U.S. funding.

Check out this data/research hub from the Southern Border Communities Coalition that provides a deep look at border militarization, the border agents masquerading as soldiers, the violent & deadly border wall & the policies that allow this to happen.

Securing America's Borders